But words—the world would fall apart without words. You wouldn’t be able to hold the pickle, hold the lettuce, choose paper or plastic, propose, answer your e-mail, pray for rain or buy a vowel from Vanna White.

Of course, the current strike isn’t quite as drastic as the sudden and total withdrawal of language. Still, it is about some pretty serious stuff, which can be inferred from the kind of news coverage it’s gotten. Anything that interferes with the nightly great American trance state is grave, indeed. If people stopped watching the tube, who knows what would happen?

Primetime TV is American glue. It fuses together a population of 200 million people who otherwise have little in common with each other and blends them into the Federal Blob. I’m not saying the writers, producers and sponsors of these shows are slipping in subliminal messages—and even if they were, the messages would be more like "BUY OUR STUFF" than any sinister political agenda.

Nightly between the hours of seven and eleven, the great beast of the Union, weary from getting and spending and glutted on microwavable beef stroganoff, retires to the reverie couch and falls into a waking slumber, where, like H.C. Earwicker in Finnegan’s Wake, he dreams the communal pipe dream of harmony, well-being and resolution. Primetime is our electronic archetype, millions of flickering screens beaming the same images, the same collective story that always ends neatly with a message of reconciliation or justice served.

All the arguments for the elimination of television, for the pros and cons of the medium, are beside the point. All the judicious weighing of noble programming vs. junk is irrelevant. Whether it is nobler in the mind to watch The X-Files or Masturbation Theatre or whether you can actually learn anything from watching the Hitler—make that the History Channel—aside from how Bow-Flex can tighten your buttocks or how Ener-X can make you into even more of a sex fiend than you already are—is immaterial.

It doesn’t matter what’s on the box—it’s all Kitsch und Quatsch anyway—what else could it be? What matters is the hive sucking at the national tit, imbibing the opium of the medium itself. There are some quite serious researchers who have claimed television causes schizophrenia—but when we are all being schizophrenics together, who’s gonna call the men in the white coats? A far more disturbing line of thought says that television was invented by schizophrenics. Schizophrenia loves company. And seriously folks, if the proverbial aliens were to observe the primetime behavior of Americans, they would think we were being collectively hypnotized by the great eye on the pyramid—which, in effect, we are.

Primetime TV explains everything that’s inexplicable in American culture: its complacence, its hypocrisy, its ignorance about the rest of the world, its gullibility and political apathy. You can’t blame all of this on the writers—yeah, this is still about the writers’ strike—but on the séance itself—our narcotic evening ritual wherein we are told through contrived plots and happy endings that everything is fine—when it ain’t.

And now these sullen, arrogant word-mailers, pecking at their pricey laptops in the lonely air of air-conditioned rooms, wish to deny us our drowsy bond, our national swoon? What insolence, what fiendish, traitorous impudence. Why, we barely know their names. As the credits roll, who in their right mind checks out the names of the little nerds who think up these nightly farces? Twitchy, four-eyed wretches who groan and sweat their days away cobbling together yet another dopey sit-com.

And these guys are already obscenely well paid. I know it’s a market economy and this stuff is based on what the market will bear, but still, when you’re making close to a million dollars a year, it seems churlish to complain so bitterly, to threaten to withhold our nightly fix, to hold your own country ransom. But what the hell, good luck, lads! Anything pried away from grasping, soulless clutches of the producers is a step in the right direction. And these crybaby executives—what a nerve!—whining that they’ll go out of business. Have you ever heard of a network going out of business?

As to the writers’ other demands, I’m of two minds. I absolutely agree with their demand that the director’s impudence be curtailed. C’mon, now, how can you call it "A Jonathan Demme Film" if he didn’t actually think up or write the thing? These guys for the most part aren’t auteurs; they’re puffed-up technicians of the tried and true. This scaly practice of branding a film with your name was begun by El Pomposo himself, Otto Preminger—and it must stop.

As to the writers’ other demand that they be allowed on the set, this is nuts. Can you imagine these synonym-seeking, plots-unlimited gadgeteers, sweaty workers on the pyramid, kvetching to Julia Roberts that she has changed their immortal words? And how many of these little trolls should be allowed on the set at a time? Just the original writer or all the re-write guys, as well? The "additional dialogue by" guys? The "story by" guy? How about the "based on" guy?

Enough of these baseless quibblings and panderings to the ears of the groundlings—let’s get metaphysical. According to a tradition long established by motel guests, God, like the writers of sit-coms and airline pilots, speaks King James’s English. But whatever He speaketh—and He probably radiates quarks rather than the tongues of men—words, as the talismanic verses that open The Gospel According to John tell us, are the beginning of everything. So word up, dog, or we’ll take ’em all back.